A child-less world : The future?

Jokes and memes aside : India's population grew tremendously between the 1930's and 1970's when those governing woke up suddenly to the fact it was growing at an alarming rate without concurrent resource growth and began devising policy to control it. Tubectomies, Vasectomies were touted. Sterilization targets were given to states by the centre. International aid was sought and supplied. "We two ours two" became a policy in India towards reducing the fertility rate towards replacement levels of population growth , which we are almost at now - that is- 2.1 fertility rate from more than 5 in the 1950's. China went a step further and mandated a strict "We two ours one" policy in 1980 which was only withdrawn in 2016- because the demography was getting screwed, and even then, the policy withdrawal came after many, many internal calls from population scientists for ending the policy over the course of several years.  

Now to the other side of the coin - Who wants to have kids these days? Either people across the world are getting super smart and learning from the experiences of others or people are automatically becoming less enthused by the idea of becoming parents and not having much between the sheets action. In fact, discounting a few northern states, fertility rate is actually below replacement level in most of India. And so our population may stabilise in the 1950's and then begin to decline is what Indian population experts are saying. 

My current interest is in what happens when people refuse to have kids? This phenomenon is already happening to some extent. For various reasons : I don't think I'll be a good parent. I am too focussed on my career to take care of a kid. I don't really like kids. I'm not good at marriage and I don't want to be single parent. And so, me, coming from a small metro city in a still developing country, know personally, people who say the above things. So, this is a real thing. At some point more people will say the above things and less people will be willing to have children than the ones who don't want kids. 

Countries and politics can induce people into having kids by giving freebies (Child allowance), more time off work for parenting, etc - like several European countries do. But still, people are just not willing to have children or most have one child and so politicians are encouraging skilled immigrants. As people see that having no kids or fewer kids is rewarding, more and more will opt for that lifestyle. Then what? What will happen to a small country when there are hardly any people now and will have none in the future. This is not likely to happen in my lifetime. But this is a scenario that may play out in the next few centuries. (Provided we are not hit by a massive meteor, huge tsunami doesn't drown half the world, etc etc. 

If everyone has just one kid or less, then what happens? The world population goes into a gradual decline like China's policy affected their demographic spread. More people would be older and less would be of working age. Then eventually as population dwindled further and further, cities and towns would get abandoned as governments would work to concentrate the resources better to provide for those cities that were still occupied. Like there are more unmarried men available compared to unmarried women in China and India, there might be sex ratio issues in the reverse. 

So clearly this one kid per every two people is not really a good idea. This replacement ratio seems to work better. But it would mean that population would remain the same as it is currently : Every two people have 2.1 kids  (That 0.1 is to account for those who die off before reaching reproduction age) . And the population that is currently on earth is 8billion odd. (Happy world population day btw). That does not seem like the right number. There is rampant poverty in a lot of places. There is malnutrition. Lack of access to healthcare. So that is not the right amount to people this earth can support. Then what is?

Nope, there is no magic number. But whatever it is that scientists and experts postulate is far lesser than 8 billion for sure. Some say 5 Billion. Some say 2 Billion. Some propose a range : Between 500 Million - 5 Billion. And so we are back to Thanos :-) Clearly this earth is overpopulated. So this population reduction policy that India is following "We two ours two", while not ideal, is the best we have got. So I say we stick to it. The problem comes when every country is trying their own population control or are implementing a population growth policy at very different times. 

By the way - Nigeria's the new China and India. Their population is set to grow very fast in the next few decades. So clearly my dire predictions of abandoned cities will not come to pass soon. We and China can always invite people from countries which have too many people to come and populate our dying cities and towns in a couple of 100 years, eh? 

Father of Daughters : An Indian Daughter's Perspective - I

 There's an episode of the TV show "The West Wing" and if you like the overly verbose writing of Aaron Sorkin - where 100 words are used to communicate 2, you would know this. It's about an Arabic phrase "Abu-el-banat" - which means a "Father of Daughters" which is shown in a funny way in a monologue by Martin Sheen - who plays The President and who is a father of three daughters - that a father of daughters needs all the help he can get - free cups of tea- in this case. If you google this phrase you would see the sheer number of ways that it can be interpreted given that we aren't native Arabic speakers. Pity, sympathy, joy, exasperation, resignation, condescension, and it's supposedly an insult as well. 

My father had only daughters. Now, he is a typical man born in the late 1940's and raised in a typically patriarchal house in south Tamil Nadu. Guess what that means? His mother did all his and his brothers' chores, and he has seen women do all the household chores in every house in his village and in the town 20kms away as well.  While his sister was taught the importance of house-keeping and cooking, he wasn't even taught to fend for himself when he had to live alone when he started working. After years of his college's hostel food, he survived on nearby messes for food as an adult, and guess what? Constant outside food takes a toll on the body. But that's a story for another day. 

Back to my point - I doubt he even knew how to make himself a cup of coffee or tea. His job was putting the food on the table and nothing else. Because that is all he was shown and any instances where he saw men performing domestic tasks either did not compute in his head or he dismissed as an anomaly. So when he raised his daughters, got them educated and then eventually married, guess what? Remember the #Sharetheload advertisement that Ariel put out that had people oooh-ing and aaah-ing? That happened organically in my father as well within a few months of my marriage. 

Men are a bit slow. And severely lack instinctive empathy compared to women. Also when it's your wife, it's still not your flesh and blood being overworked and loaded with household chores in addition to office work and taking care of the kids. The child that he raised with so much love and care was now the wife in another man's house. The bulb doesn't go off otherwise it appears. So, slowly my father began to take on some repetitive tasks that  normally fell to my mother even though she was a working woman herself. He is not making full meals mind you, but still, even if he can make coffee and tea for himself, heat up his own meals, wash the vessels occasionally, that is a big load off my mother's back. 

A father of daughters grows up eventually. He starts seeing things he never had before, even in his later years, he is capable of learning and changing. What about the fathers of only sons? 

How to be successful at marriage :-)

 Now that I have been married for almost 10 years, and my spouse and I have not murdered each other (yet :-) I feel experienced enough to turn into the agony aunt that we all love to hate. You know, the one who gives unsolicited advice whenever you meet ? (Oh Jeez, Can I not enjoy my coffee in peace before it cools down ?) The one you nod at with the same expression on your face for 10 minutes and hope she goes away? Yup, that's me now.

Now, the title of this piece could easily be " How to be successful at anything" but then it would become like a Dale Carnegie Book. 

1. Remember only the good things in your marriage and keep at it . Really - that's about it. First and last piece of advice. 

For those who need elaboration - here goes : Every aspect of our lives come with the good and the bad experiences and hence memories. Our jobs. Our studies. Our families. Our spouses. The only way to be successful at anything is keeping at it. And to consciously remember only the good things and not linger on the bad ones. Because when we keep bringing up and remembering the bad aspects of anything, we turn bitter, we lose the enthusiasm for the good parts, we get depressed and slowly turn towards ending the aspect- maybe job or the marriage or the course you are are studying. Then what? Finding the perfect job and perfect spouse can be a never ending search and is that really an effective use of our time instead of investing in the bird in our hand ? So, remember only the good parts, and live through the bad parts and immediately forget them. And be kind - to yourself and others. For, surely you aren't perfect at everything- and I'm sure you're a pain in some parts of your life and people have to put up with you just as they have to put up with me. 

But this is an ongoing process. This need to make yourself forget the bad experiences that come with married life. In the olden days, middle class women had a very different attitude to marriage- they were made dependant on the institution - Coz -not able to generate money for food is a big dinger. (Because mostly they were not employable because they were not educated.  Not to mention, that most middle class life across the world had women as only home makers because society was more unforgiving in those days for those who went against norms.)

 These days we have freedom  of choice about our education and career and it hardly inures us to hardships - because we don't face big hardships in our early years and marriage forces us- women and men equally but in different ways- into making space for someone else's wants and needs and the hardest aspect is to make space for the wants and needs of our spouses's families - in India at least where women are trained and groomed to leave their parents and go and live elsewhere with their husband's families, make career choices within constraints imposed by others - even if they don't want to.  When we begin to do things in our lives that we don't really want to  - in the interests of having a traditional family and raising children - it really jars with our individual needs, doesn't it?

 This unpleasantness is a part of grown up life and it chafes us - some more than others. So, the people and women in particular that succeed in a marriage are the ones who can look at the larger picture and put up with the small nuisances with good cheer. (Disclaimer - I'm not talking about putting up with wife beaters. I'm merely talking about putting up with your run of the mill, middle-class Indian Kumar and his family in the interest of the larger picture. Indian Kumar may not be so bad, he can even be Prince Charming on occasion:-)

Now for those who scoff and say I don't need to have a traditional family, or I don't need to have kids or I don't need a spouse's support even if I do want to raise kids, well kudos to you.  (Some recent studies show that the happiest people on the planet are women who are unmarried and have no kids - by choice. Here's a link if you want to know more : https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-happier-without-children-or-a-spouse-happiness-expert ) If you are one of the above, then this particular blog article is clearly not meant for you. This is meant for the countless women and men who struggle daily with the idea of - Why should I put up with this shit? Because in India - while the rate is still low compared to global divorce rates (1.1% is India's divorce rate) the rate has actually doubled between 2000-2020 - here is a link about that if you want to know more -  https://www.livemint.com/news/india/non-marriage-very-rare-in-india-but-divorces-doubled-in-past-two-decades-report-1561486297890.html) and this question looms large : Why should I put up with all these choices that I haven't really made for myself?

Because the larger picture maybe worth it. And it's for you to decide if you want to make your marriage succeed , or if it is too horrible to live in and it's better to cut your losses and run now. Because the line each of us draws in the sand is different. I can put up with this much and no further. So, find your line. Sometimes you may be willing to re-draw it (if you have a supportive spouse) and sometimes not. And I will leave you again with what I started with: 

Remember only the good parts and try to live through and then forget the bad parts. Else every marriage we attempt will end in failure. 

The controversy of Religion and the controversy of Race- II - Evolution

 

Hinduism- or parts of it that has travelled to the east from our land....and when you see the rituals practised towards clearly identifiable Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesh idols, you can see that while they have influences from India, they are largely local...from the flowers in the decoration, to the songs sung, to the meat  - goats, chicken, pig etc that is offered in the temple itself. (Clearly the effect that was started by Jainism that has rid most of our Indian Hindu temples off animal offerings has not gone there. That some of our temples are holding on to the practise of animal offering is another subject for another day.) Btw, the most recent cool thing is to offer bubble tea for Ganesh in Thailand. Diabetes fear anyone? No worse than our jaggery and sugar laden modaks you say? Fair enough.

This kind of Hinduism varietal between India and the far east countries that still practise some form of Hinduism shows us how insular we are being when we try to codify our religion....and try to limit it from all it can be when we say - only this practise can be called Hinduism and that practise should not. Only this god is Hindu and that god is not. Where do we limit it and where do we not? Gods prayed to before 1947 are Hindu gods and those that came after are not? Gods or their embodiments within the sub-continent are Hindu Gods and the versions/avatars prayed to in Burma-Thailand-Indonesia etc are not?

This last question is specifically related to the local gods that are ubiquitous to every nook and cranny in our country. A small diety/shrine that was a anthill- turned snakehill which was on the way to my school where local women worshipped and offered milk, was suddenly painted with turmeric and vermillion one day, then a few years later, became a 'Amman' (Metal face mask of a generic Goddess was installed in front of the crumbling snake-hill) with a shed built over her when I was a teenager. A single-roomed 'Temple' was built around it by the time I had started working. Somewhere along the way, a proper "Amman" idol made of black stone was installed where the original anthill had been located. A priest started working there. When I recently visited Chennai, I saw that the Amman Temple was now larger, and the outer wall painted with white and red and with a proper "praharam" made of metal grillwork around the Central "Amman". This has happened in the last 35-40 years, within my lifetime. (Do I hear encroachment? Misuse of Porramboke land? Yup, all of it is true and more). But this is a microcosm of the evolution of one part of Hinduism happening right in front of our eyes. Just try to apply that over the past several thousand years in widely ranging people and societies across the four directions in our country and then you might get the larger picture of why we are as we are- with diverse practices and equally diverse thoughts about our religion.

(Have you heard of the Bodyguard Muneeswaran Temple in Chennai? This is a story of how some labourers brought their village diety with them to Chennai and set it up near their new place of work, near the Barracks in Park Town. A British Commander who had some objections and asked it to be removed met with an accident. Believing that his accident was a result of his "objections" to the newly arrived god, he let the idol stay where it had been planted. This idol now has a proper temple with regular sevai. This Muni"Easwaran" / a form of Shiva - is believed to protect one from accidents. People buying new vehicles come there for a poojai in the mornings where a line of autos and cars are parked right in front of the temple. I don't know about the vehicles parked there for the poojai, but the traffic in already congested Park Town gets worse for wear for sure on some days due to the temple crowds, leading to scrapes and dents for others) 

Now to house-gods. This is a practise relevant in Thanjavur area among some saivaite castes and maybe in other areas as well. Every house in my father's village has a god. Really. They are called Veettu-Deivams. It usually looked similar in most houses' poojai rooms I had seen during my holidays. It was a rectangular portion of the wall, about 2 ft* 1ft, painted in Kaavi (Reddish Brown). And inside it was painted many pattais (three white horizontal stripes with a red dot in the centre - symbol of Shiva) and a few namams (Three vertical stripes -centre one is usually red - symbol of Vishnu). Whenever the oldest male member of a house died, the pattern inside the painting had to be re-painted. Whenever the house underwent painting also, the Veettu Deivam was repainted. And on every Pongal Day? (No, that's not it.) But that patch of the wall was regularly repainted on a yearly basis. And any male member who went to live elsewhere had to paint the same pattern in their Poojai rooms and pray to it on a regular basis. The Pattais and Namams represented their forefathers. These days it has evolved into rectangular wooden tray-like thing that can be hung up anywhere given that mostly people don't live where their grandparents lived  -given the large move of the Indian population from rural-farming lives to urban -office going lives. And who can repaint their Pooja rooms on a regular basis anyway? My mother and aunts now repaint their "hang-able" Veettu-Deivams easily from time to time. (Search about this on Google and you wouldn't get a single correct hit for the image. Maybe this practise is totally dying out or is more highly guarded that I would have thought.)

Forgive the rambling. My point is that, we are ever evolving as a species. Let our religion itself evolve just like our religious practises do. Because if we stop to codify and limit Hinduism from absorbing, assimilating, and spreading in different directions (not geographical!!! In thought, in philosophy, in practise, in rituals etc....) we stop evolving. And from history the one thing we can learn is that when something stopped evolving, it dwindled and then died. So for those die-hard right wingers and self-appointed protectors of Hinduism out there, if you want several more generations of your descendants to  enjoy this beautiful religion of Hinduism (provided the earth is not destroyed by a meteor...global warming...yada yada), be accepting of adaptations we must do in order to keep our religion evolving and thereby relevant through the glorious ages yet to come. 

How to hit on a woman politely: Pointers for the uninitiated

 This suddenly different sort of post is due to a 'news' article I read recently about how a success party for a movie ended on a very sour note because one man from the production company 'misbehaved' with one of the female assistant directors of the movie. It is a whole different matter because while several mainstream newspapers reported about the 'success' party along with pictures of the massively popular ensemble cast members, none reported about the 'ruckus' and 'trashing' that happened at the end of the party due to this 'upsetting' event. (Production head honcho was very upset about this evidently). The news of this has leaked because some of the party attenders have alluded to what happened on their social media.  

This got me thinking about how our boys - that is- most Tamil boys specifically and more liberally, young Indian boys (late teens and early twenties), have absolutely no idea on how to hit on single women they meet in clubs/pubs/restaurants without coming across as complete creeps. 

1. They do not know how to read if a woman is interested in them or not. ( Just because a woman is dancing with you, alone or with a group of friends, does not mean she wants you to paw her. It means she just wants to dance.)

2. Even if the guy perceives interest from a woman and reciprocate the interest, he does not know how to take it forward.

3. If they do make a verbal sexual proposition to a woman, it most often than not, comes across as creepy or crass that makes the woman/girl turn away in disgust. (Not everyone can be a Joey Tribbianni and click his tongue and make a kissy face and have women get naked. First that's not reality, and also Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Cochin is not New York.) 

(Disclaimer : I'm talking exclusively about boys/men who understand consent- I am not talking about the sexual harassers/ molesting creeps - This article is just about the run of the mill, regular Kumars of my generation) 

So - they need pointers/tips on making a proposition - a polite proposition to a woman, one that has a better response than getting a slap / slipper to the face, or worse if the boy is the clueless type who makes an idiot of himself(see above point 1), then, the girl gets shocked/ yells at him, and then, trashing from other men who are nearby. 

1 . Is the woman/girl sustaining eye contact with you ? This is the first indicator. Because if a girl identifies you as a creep/sleazo, then her eyes will slide away fast. You better not make an approach if there is anything sexual on your mind. 

2. Is your conversation interesting?  Coz if you are only going to keep on talking about your self and not let her get a word in, the interest will flag faster than the next coffee/ drink/course will arrive at your table/nook.

3. Girls these days are very progressive. If they are interested in you for more than friendship, most will let you know, if not explicitly, then at least there will be verbal indicators if not physical signalling. Learn to listen to the verbal and non-verbal cues the girl/woman is giving you.

4. It is perfectly okay to ask -"Can I kiss you? " in a polite tone and get a resounding "NO" as an answer and have an uncomfortable conversation or be ignored by the girl later, rather than hint around and waste your time and hers, or worse, try something stupid that would get you a slap on the face. 

5. Also, be mentally prepared that the girl may/will gossip about your moves/overtures with her friends and you may get snide remarks/be teased about your actions later by her friends and your friends if you have common friends or move in the same circles. Be prepared to take the teasing good natured-ly or at least to shrug it off with panache . ( This is if you are a poor reader of signs of interest shown in you and you have managed to completely misread the girl and she is angry/irritated with you.) 

6. If the answer is "Yes", then kiss her for sure, but try not to maul the poor girl/woman and try to let her take the lead so you understand where her comfort/discomfort levels are. After all, she only agreed to kiss you.  

Note: These points are all for newly met women/girls. If you are slotted firmly in the friend-zone with a girl you have known for a while, the open and sustained eye-contact the girl may maintain with you will be very different than if she wants to be in your pants. Please don't hit on your existing female friends unless you are ABSOLUTELY SURE there is sexual interest, because that is the fastest way to lose the friend.